The Teachers' Lounge

This is a bold film that uses not a child vampire, as in Abigail, in cinemas now, but real children, and the adults charged with their care...

It's incredibly tense... it almost has a Hitchcockian edge.

Benesch is superb, her face a glazed mask of panic as the shockwaves resulting from her actions shake the very foundations of the school.

Çatak resists neat answers, and Benesch anchors the film with a performance of contained subtlety.

A chain-reaction melodrama: acted by self-serious types, scored by tightly wound strings, dependent on characters saying the wrong things and leaving the right ones unsaid with jaws firmly clenched.

It’s a sound lesson in politics – or is it biology? – but more importantly, it’s a chalk-snappingly tense watch.

The Teachers' Lounge describes the double moral standard of intolerance and of a political correctness that while questioning it, paradoxically ends up prolonging it. [Full review in Spanish]

The sense of atmosphere The Teachers’ Lounge creates makes it absolutely worth a watch.

Ilker Çatak’s heart-pounding thriller ... puts Leonie Benesch’s kind-hearted soul through the wringer when she steps into a petty theft charge that spirals.

The film is impeccably acted and has some suspense built into its plot. Ultimately, though, it’s a frustrating film that may make you grateful if you are no longer involved in the school system.